I want to give you some thoughts to take your Bible studies even deeper. Here are three strategies to make your Bible study time stickier—sticking in your heart and your mind.
Check out the video version of this episode of The Podcast.
On my blog I have numerous Study Bibles that I hav reviewed.
And iIf you are interested in the posts and videos where I talk about how to handle difficult-to-understand passages of Scripture, check out Handling Tough Texts and The Lens for Difficult Biblical Passages.
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I want to give you some thoughts to take your Bible studies even deeper. Welcome to the podcast with your host Craig T. Owens. Craig's new book, When Sheep Bite, is available now at CraigT. Owens.com. Hands down my Bible is my favorite book to read. I love to read. You can see a little bit of my library behind me, but I'm surrounded by books all the time. I always have multiple books that I'm reading, but without a doubt, my Bible is the book that I read the most and not only do I read it the most, but it's the book that I use the most to filter all of the other books that I'm reading as well. And I find that the more I read my Bible, the more it helps me understand other books. And then there are some other books that I read that help me understand the Bible as well. I've talked before about getting a handle on some of the texts that we read in the Bible that are maybe difficult to understand. And I hope that you have watched a couple of those. If you haven't, I'm going to share in the show notes below. I'll share a couple of links there, but I want to really talk to you today about some ideas for taking your Bible study a little deeper. And as a result, it's going to make it what I'm going to call stickier. It's going to stick a little bit more in your heart and your mind. It's going to be a little bit more of a resource there for you to be able to share with other people as well. I want you to think about genres. When we talk about different kinds of literature, we talk about genres of literature. So when I would be writing something poetic to my wife and I wanted to express my love for her, I might talk about how my love is as deep as the ocean, or I might say something like, honey, I love you to the moon and back. Now when you hear phrases like that, as long as you're not an oceanographer or an astronomer taking me literally on the depth of the ocean or the distance from the earth to the moon, you understand that I'm just using this picturesque language, this very expressive language to try to convey my love. Well, it's the same thing in the Bible as well. We will got to understand the genre of the literature that we're reading or the setting in which it's taking place. I'll tell you what got me thinking about this was from Matthew 13. Jesus is telling his well-known parable, the parable of the sower. And in chapter 13, it says his disciples came to him and said, "Why do you speak to the people in parables? Why are you telling them stories like this?" So just even as the disciples saying that, they are recognizing that there are different styles of verbal communication. And then as it's written down, then it becomes a different genre of literature. What Jesus in essence said about this parable is he said, "This is the most accessible of all of my parables. It's the one that most people can grasp and I want you to get a handle on this one because if you do, it's going to be the key to unlocking other parables." So here's the study tip that I would give to you is when you are reading a parable, understand that what Jesus is trying to get you to tap into is either nature around you, like in this case, the parable of the sower, their seed that's growing, or human nature inside of you. He's trying to get you to look at something from a different perspective, to think a little bit about, "All right, yes, I understand what a seed is when it drops in the ground." And I grew some of those seeds in school before. We did a little science experiment, and I watched that root go down, and then I watched the stalk begin to come up, and then Jesus in this parable, he's talking about, "Well, the root couldn't even go down because the ground was hard." Or the stalk came up really quickly, but it withered because it didn't have enough of a root down there. And you begin to think about it that way, or then you begin to think about in your own heart. What does it mean if the seed was choked out by the weeds of worry? What kind of worry comes into my heart and what is that choking out? Or maybe human nature, say that you read the parable that Jesus is talking about a woman who has lost something valuable. Put yourself in that story. Have you ever lost something? You've been frantically searching for something that's very, very important to you, and you can't find it. What emotions were you feeling? What were you experiencing? And then what did you experience when you found what you found? I like what Matthew Henry said about parables. A parable is a shell that keeps good fruit for the diligent, but keeps it from the slothful. In other words, Jesus was saying, "I want you to work a little bit. Don't just read this on the surface, but understand the story that I'm telling underneath there." That would be the first one I'd give you. The second one, I talked to you about a historical setting. When you are reading a history, there's a battle going on. There is a marriage that's taking place. There's some sort of custom that is being handed down from one family to another. Don't just read those words on a page, but stop for a second and do a little research. I love my archaeological study Bible. This one gives me a lot of background notes. So for instance, if there was a siege that was taking place, an enemy came in, surrounded a city. They're beginning to attack the city. Archaeologists have found things inside that city that tell us about the horrors of the siege. Tell us how bad it was for the people inside the city. I don't want to just read past those words, but I know that that is a historical setting. That is an actual event in history, which means there's a record of it someplace else outside of the Bible. Let me go and see what archaeologists or anthropologists or historians have had to say about those cultures, about those events, because that's going to make the pages of Scripture come alive to me. The third one I tell you to do a little bit more digging on is prophecies. Sometimes we have prophecies that are foretold in the Old Testament, or as I like to call it the first Testament, and then we see a fulfillment in the New Testament, the second Testament. So if you're reading along and you see something like this in the second Testament, this was to fulfill and you see some words from the first Testament, stop and go back and read those words. What was taking place at that time? What were people concerned about? What were they looking forward to? And then how was that fulfilled in the second Testament? Sometimes those prophecies that are given in the first Testament only find a partial fulfillment in the second Testament, but we're still looking forward to its fuller fulfillment, its ultimate fulfillment. So look ahead in time, see what some of the epistle writers said about the second coming of Jesus. So go to the book of Revelation and see what is happening in the eternity after time is done here. How are those going to be fulfilled? Don't just look at that one moment in time, but go back in time, go forward in time and see how you can connect that. When you use resources like that as you're reading the Bible, like I said at the beginning, it's going to make it sticky. It's going to stick in your heart. It's going to stick in your mind and you're going to be able to pull things out as a to be able to recall them for yourself, but also as a means to share them with other people. Here's what Jesus said, take care how you listen for whoever has to him more will be given and whoever does not have even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him. In the context of studying the Bible, I think what Jesus is saying is when you dig a little bit more, you have some stuff, you have some knowledge and you've dug a little deeper, you're going to see even more. But if you just read it on the surface and you think, Oh, that's it. I've got it. You're probably not going to keep it. It's not going to stick in your memory. It's not going to stick in your heart, you're not going to be able to live it out. So whether it's parables, whether it's history, whether it's prophecy, find some resources that you can tap into that will help you go deeper, help it stick in your heart, stick in your mind. You'll enjoy your Bible reading so much more and it'll be a greater blessing to you and to those around you. Craig's new book when sheep bite is available now to order go to Craig T. Owens dot com . . (upbeat music)
